March 21, 2013 — Obama Addresses Israeli Youth
During the first foreign trip of his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to 600 university students in Jerusalem in an address broadcast on television and radio. He urges Israeli youths to embrace a peaceful future with the Palestinians, pleads for a two-state solution and declares that those who reject Israel’s right to exist “might as well reject the earth beneath them or the sky above because Israel is not going anywhere.”
March 22, 1945 — Arab League Forms
Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Transjordan sign the Arab League Constitution after five days of deliberations in Cairo. A Palestinian representative, Musa al Alami, participates in the talks but does not sign the document. The charter recognizes pan-Arab nationalism and the independence and sovereignty of each state. It calls for the settlement of state disputes and cooperation on economic, cultural and social welfare issues.
March 23, 1915 — Zion Mule Corps Is Created
About 500 volunteers form a Jewish unit of the British army in Alexandria, Egypt. Many of the volunteers had been expelled from Palestine in December 1914 because of the Ottoman Empire’s fear that the Jewish population posed an internal threat. The unit is Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s idea. Joseph Trumpeldor emerges as the highest-ranking Jewish officer in what begins as the Assyrian Refugee Mule Corps and becomes the Zion Mule Corps.
March 24, 1966 — Israeli TV Goes on Air
An instructional program in math targeting seventh- and ninth-graders in 32 schools becomes Israel’s first TV broadcast. Ten years behind Jordan and six years after Egypt, Israel launches domestic television because the educational possibilities overcome fears of negative influences. Broadcasts for the general public begin in 1968. Israelis have to wait more than two decades for a second domestic channel.
March 25, 1950 — Saudi Diplomat: We’ll Never Recognize Israel
Visiting Saudi Arabia, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee asks the Saudi deputy foreign minister, Sheik Yusuf Yassin, whether Arab states could normalize relations with Israel. Yassin responds that the Arab nations will never agree to any working relationship with Israel. “Arabs have no aggressive designs against Israel but intend to treat that state as if a wall surrounded it,” Yassin says. “We shall never admit a Jew in Saudi Arabia.”
March 26, 1979 — Egypt, Israel Sign Peace Treaty
Sixteen months after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem and six months after the signing of the Camp David Accords, Sadat joins Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the White House to sign the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state. The core of the treaty is Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai in exchange for Egyptian recognition and normal relations.
March 27, 1949 — Poet Elisheva Bikhovsky Dies
Elisheva Bikhovsky, one of the “four mothers” of modern Hebrew poetry, dies of cancer at age 60 in Tiberias. Bikhovsky, who was not Jewish, was the first woman to write a modern volume of Hebrew poetry published in Palestine. She fell in love with Hebrew and Zionism in Russia. In 1920 she began writing exclusively in Hebrew and married her Hebrew tutor, with whom she moved to Palestine in 1925.
Items are provided by the Center for Israel Education (israeled.org), where you can find more details.